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It's a boy!
The world's first child created using a new "three parent" technique is said to be doing just fine.
Progressives are celebrating, while some conservatives are saying much more research needs to be done---other Christian conservatives are expressing ethical concerns.
Yesterday NBC was explaining to America why this is a good thing.
Christian leaders are saying the innovation and its acceptance combine two of the most troubling bioethical issues related to IVF. The creation of three parent embryos and "designer babies" are each troubling. "But to combine them is a significant leap toward accepting dehumanizing eugenics."
The Netherlands is showing the world what a moral "slippery slope" looks like when people become "as God."
NBC News and the NBC Today Show gave considerable attention to this yesterday, as did news media around the world.
While touching on some of the concerns about the procedure and the complications of a child having 3 biological parents, the exuberance was on full display in their reporting.
That same exuberance was displayed in England where Parliament has recently passed a law allowing the creation of 3 parent babies.
The Independent wrote, "Hopefully this will tame the more zealous critics...and we will witness soon a birth of the first mitochondrial donation baby in the UK."
Be Informed.
How 3 parent babies are created.
This procedure is not legal in the United States---yet, but it is legal in the UK. However, due to continued criticism by conservatives in the UK, a group of fertility experts from New York, Cincinnati and Britain did the experimental treatment in Mexico, where they said there are "no rules."
Dr. Zhang and his team from New York led the fertilization procedure.
The primary couple are Jordanian and Muslim, so the doctors had to modify the procedure somewhat to eliminate the couple's religious concerns about discarding, or killing two embryos which is required in the process.
The Jordanian mother's genes carries Leigh Syndrome which is a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system. Genes for the disease reside in DNA in the mitochondria. Scientists who favor this "advancement" say the mitochondria is like little batteries that provide energy for our cells.
Those scientists and doctors who oppose this procedure say that is an over simplification. It's more complex than that, and genetic imprint also exist in the mitochondria.
The method of creating a 3 parent child as approved in the UK, is called pronuclear transfer and involves fertilizing both the mother's egg and a donor egg with the father's sperm. Before the fertilized eggs start dividing into early stage embryos each nucleus is removed. The nucleus from the donor's egg is discarded and replaced by that from the mother's fertilized egg.
NBC notes that "This method uses some cloning technology, and if everything goes as planned, the resulting embryo has DNA from three parents---the mother, the sperm donor and a bit from the egg donor. That's because not all your DNA is in nucleus of the cell. Some is in the mitochondria."
Bert Smeets at Maastricht University in the Netherlands told the press, "This is exciting news."
Smeets is an advocate and leader of this and other so-called "progressive science." He is also instrumental in advancing euthanasia in Holland.
I'll come back to Dr. Smeets in a moment.
NBC was quick to point out the mother has had "Four pregnancy losses and two deceased children at age 8 months and 6 years from Leigh Syndrome.
The Question.
Shouldn't this couple have a right to be benefited by new science? And if we can do it scientifically, why should we not help people in this way?
Be Discerning.
The Answer.
Dr. Zhang says if it helps people it's ethical. Those who worked with him agree. But what is the basis for ethics?
Bert Smeets from the University in the Netherlands, who supports the procedure, is suggesting the team monitor the child for a while, in that an earlier attempt to create a 3 parent child failed.
I have read the comments by a number of conservative medical experts in this field of genetics and science---the following is generally their comments and concerns---along with some of my own.
The result of this procedure is a baby with genetic information from three people.
This innovation and acceptance combine two of the most troubling bioethical issues related to IVF. The creation of the three-parent embryos and "designer babies" are each troubling. But to combine them is a significant leap forward into dehumanizing eugenics.
Eugenics is the practise of improving the genetic composition of a population by increasing the number of people who have a more desired trait and reducing those with less desirable traits.
This is currently being used increasingly to screen for children who may have Down Syndrome---then kill them before they are born.
This too, is believed to be "ethical" by the secular progressive Left.
Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an eugenicist.She wrote and spoke about it extensively. She believed and advanced the idea that the culture would become more vibrant by reducing the number of black babies being born.
This, she wrote, helps everyone, therefore it is the right thing to do.
With the legalization of abortion and a series of other decisions that undermine the sanctity of life, we have become a culture of "choices."
We now have the legal "right" to choose whether a baby lives or dies---as long as they are killed before leaving the womb.
This notion of creating babies from multiple biological parents plays heavily to the homosexual and polygamist communities.
By mixing in some genetic material, anyone can be added to the "parental line" of a child.
A polygamist family could have any number of genetic fathers and mothers imprinted in their children.
This advances the ability of homosexuals to have children biologically related to both same sex partners.
Who then would be legally entitled to be claimed as "parents"? If current legal trends continue the answer would be "all of them."
We are entering "a brave new world", a world without genetic boundaries, a new age of human definition.
Although these doctors claim it will never happen---there are safe guards---we stand on the threshold of "designer babies"---order what you want---we'll deliver it in 9 months, possibly sooner.
It is a world that we are unprepared for---legally, ethically, politically, mentally and culturally---and it is a world from which we may not be able to turn back.
It is the ultimately "slippery slope."
Charlie Butts wrote an unrelated article yesterday about the moral and ethical slippery slope of Dr. Smeets country--- Holland.
The Netherlands was used as an example when activists pushed for doctor assisted suicide here in Washington State. "Look how well it works in Holland" they said.
It helps people who are suffering to end their lives with dignity, we were told. And we were told not to worry, because there were numbers of protections in place so assisted suicide could never be misused or abused.
People in the Netherlands were told the same thing when they legalized assisted suicide.
At first there were restraints and restrictions in the Netherlands, but "Now" Alex Schadenberg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, says "they want to extend current Dutch law to state that euthanasia can be preformed on children ages 12 to 16 with permission of the parents of if the child is ruled to be incompetent."
"It's a slippery slope" he says. As people have become accustomed to the law they have let down their guard and the far Left progressive politicians continue to change the rules and broaden the range of people who qualify, including, now, children as old as 16.
Einstein once said "Any fool can know how. The point is to understand why."
Science may learn how, but it is God who knows why.
Science is not God, and when it seeks to be God things do not end well.
Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful.